Top 4 Reasons the 2016 Election Could End in Chaos

2. The Electoral College is Flawed, and Could Create Massive Confusion

The Electoral College does not have to match the country’s popular vote.

This, in and of itself, maybe isn’t a problem if everyone voting understands that the United States is a Republic, and understands why the Electoral College was created. How though, are the most frenzied supporters on the right or left who don’t understand this, going to act if their candidate gets the most popular votes nationwide, but then doesn’t win? Will they see disenfranchisement? Outright fraud?

The Electoral College has always been a ticking time-bomb for a close presidential election erupting into a crisis, or at least giving a vast number of people in the country a belief that they were robbed of democracy.

This article won’t attempt to explain all of the Electoral College processes to choose our next president, but here’s a list of some of its most troubling aspects which could potentially lead to mass dissatisfaction:

• Only 29 states have laws requiring that the members of the Electoral College vote for the candidate their state popular vote picked, so many electors can completely go against the people’s will (called faithless electors).
• Very few people (mostly party insiders) have any say in picking who these electors are.
• Even when the Electoral College works as designed, it can still allow an extreme scenario of someone winning the presidency with as little as 22% of the popular vote and only eleven states supporting him or her.
• Also when working as designed, there are multiple scenarios where the Electoral College can tie, or lock, meaning that no candidate reaches the magical 270 number to declare an electoral winner on November 8th.

As stated earlier, none of this matters in a blowout; it’s only in a very tight race where the Electoral College starts to cause issues. If there isn’t a landslide though, there’s always a chance of a 269 to 269 tie for the two major party candidates, regardless of the popular vote totals. And this year, because of the abhorrence many people feel for both Trump and Clinton, there is a real chance that one of the third party candidates (Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or Evan McMullin) will garner enough votes to win a state, or at least take away enough votes in a swing state to flip it from one candidate to the other. If that were to happen, then it is very possible that no one would reach 270 electoral votes needed to win.

So what happens if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes? According to the 12th amendment of the Constitution, the new House of Representatives picks our next President, and the new Senate picks the Vice President. Those idiots in Congress? Yep, those guys. And neither of these bodies have to abide by the popular vote either, only choose from the top three vote-getters for President, and the top two for Vice President.

This means, depending on who wins the seats for the new Congress, we could potentially have a President who didn’t come close to winning the popular vote, or even a President and Vice President of different parties. The potential jockeying scenarios and misdeeds over this scenario that could arise going into the New Year are enough to make Frank Underwood from House of Cards blush. And this is all if the system just works “properly.”

Imagine if something actually goes wrong. Which brings us to reason 3 why there could be chaos this November…